Suicide In My Mind
The first time I tried to commit suicide I was 8 years old. I tried to overdose on baby aspirin. I still remember that stomach pumping. Mom and the doctor thought it was an accident, that I thought the aspirin was candy. It wasn’t and I didn’t.
I tried again in my very early teens. More pills. My angels were watching over me as always. My stomach refused the pills before I could do the damage I wanted. Again, Mom thought it was an accident. After all, how can a gifted, successful, straight A student want to off herself?
They didn’t know the truth. What my abusers did to me for over a decade in a cold dark cellar. I was out of options, had nowhere to run and I was powerless to fight them off. I was too little and they were too big, I had nowhere to turn. If I told anyone, I knew they’d kill me. They’d already come so close.
As an adult, I now finally understand what was happening in my life. Thanks to recalled memories, I know my poor little girl self was tortured, abused, horrified and most importantly…totally alone.
The Mind of a Child
Children don’t have the faculties to deal with the dark side of life. To a child, trauma doesn’t have to be the Big T…like the torture I endured. To a child, even the little t trauma of kids making fun of you, being the odd kid out, being bullied or simply feeling misunderstood is enough to create the programs that drive you to the edge, and beyond.
Now imagine what social media and all the nasty bullies are doing to our kids. That’s another blog to come..
Our early childhood programs drive the rest of our lives. We don’t know they do. They’re unconscious guides. But these early programs determine our destiny. Here’s how it works.
As children, we have no critical faculty to filter the truth of a situation.
We accept what is said and done to us as reality.
We embed these early childhood realities in our unconscious mind as the baseline mindware programs for our future.
Whether the beliefs and experiences are true in the world at large or not – we take them as the foundation of our own personal reality.
As we grow, these early programs become the filters of the data that defines our reality, creating more experiences that reinforce their validity. We become self-fulfilling prophecies of our own early childhood.
My programs said that I had to be perfect to stay alive. They also knew that I could never ever be perfect. I was doomed to an eternal loop of imperfection and punishment.
Yep – that’s a double bind. I could not win. The beatings and torture for even the slightest mistake imprinted those truths deeply. They drove my life.
I didn’t know it until I was almost 50 years old.
Your Mind in the Modern World
Our modern world makes it even more difficult to manage those early childhood programs. Even the best parents don’t really have control of what their child is exposed to from peers, teachers, media and the world we live in.
New mindware is being programmed into us by the news media, supposed entertainment, games and more. Programs of fear and powerlessness. The sinking feeling when a bully comes after you on social for all your friends to see. Fear of the “evil” out there that’s plastered on the news, and the powerlessness to do anything about it.
When Survival Breeds Suicide
We’re all programmed with an instinctive response to fear. It’s called the fight, flight or freeze response, what I call survival mind. In today’s world, thanks to the programming we receive, we are living in a constant state of unconscious fear… so our triggers are highly activated.
We’re being programmed toward powerlessness against the humongous enemies “out there.” Whether it’s the economy or the terrorists, we’re pretty much at the mercy of others. This programming serves to trigger a fight, flight or freeze response.
If we freeze, we simply hunker down and accept our plight. Stew about it. Mourn about it. Which explains the apathy we see around us in our world today. Apathy toward others in need, apathy toward pretty much anything other than our own selves and our safety. And so the program goes.
If we choose to flee – we can flee into ourselves and shut down. Due to the apathy around us we hunker down even more. That’s when suicide often rears its ugly head. After all – we’re powerless and no one cares. We are alone, or so our unconscious mind believes. I can tell you, that feeling of being alone at the will of your torturers is the worst feeling of mt entire life, beyond anything I would have imagined before I remembered.
There are also some humans who trigger into the fight option. Shoot ‘em up games and entertainment serve to program an emotional disconnection from the act of killing. So if the choice is to fight – the guns come out and we all know the consequences.
The Bottom Line
When I tried to take my own life – it was to get away from horrors that my child’s mind couldn’t comprehend, horrors that had my praying to God to let me die. When God didn’t answer, I took matters into my own hands.
I was lucky.
My mom found out the truth, stepped in and by my early teens, my life changed. I had the pure love, safety and positive support I needed to come back from the edge. My Mom surrounded me with her oh-so-bright light, even though she still didn’t really understand the long term impacts of all that darkness on me. Neither of us did.
Today’s kids have a whole other level of programming, beyond what might be their experience. No matter how careful parents are with their children, highly negative, downright overwhelming programming is everywhere around us.
I don’t have the answers. The issues around suicide are too complex.
What I do know is that our kids deserve better than what our modern world gives to them. I also know that the more we understand about the external influences on our children, the more we can guide them to steer away from the programming that drives them toward what could become their final hour.
Image courtesy of clpeine
